by Ken MacLeod
Donald glowered. ‘It is not!’ he said. ‘It’s like the stories we believed when we were wee.’ He raised his hands, fingers dangling and shoogling. ‘Woo-oo-ooh!’
Malcolm clouted him. Donald kicked. They exchanged a few more blows. Hugh grabbed shoulders.
‘Stop it!’ he yelled.
They both pummelled him for a change, and then everyone backed off. No recriminations. They had outgrown telling on each other, but not outgrown hurting each other.
‘Forget about the man,’ Hugh said. ‘But you saw it, you saw the land all bright at least.’
‘So? It was the sun in my eyes,’ said Donald.
Malcolm nodded along. ‘Yes, that was it, the sun.’
Hugh knew they were lying. They’d seen what he’d seen.
‘Och, that’s what it was,’ he said. ‘And maybe I just saw a shadow, or a sheep.’
‘We were fleeing from a sheep?’ Malcolm asked, his voice squeaking with disbelief.
They all laughed, Hugh too.
‘I’ve got a new game,’ said Donald.
They ran down the last green slope to the back of the house and jumped on their bikes and raced away.
That evening, by way of explaining how he’d got his clothes, shoes and skin in such a state, Hugh told his father about how he’d been exploring a tunnel or cave or passageway up in the hills. He didn’t say anything about what he’d seen.
‘Show me your phone,’ his father said.
Hugh handed it over and his father punched up the GPS tracker app. He slid the phone back across the table.
‘See the place where you turn around?’ he said.
Hugh looked down at the black squiggle of his route on the screen map.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Now flick to… wait a minute.’
His father tapped at his own phone. The route line remained but the underlying map had changed, from a satellite pic with tags to a gridded white sheet with contour lines and little symbols. Right at the point where the route line doubled back was a row of tiny red arrowheads.
‘Culvert,’ his father said.
‘What’s it doing up there?’ Hugh asked.
‘The company was going to site a windmill there, a few years ago,’ his father explained. ‘Changed their minds, that’s all, but not before they’d gone ahead and started building a culvert to draw off flash floods.’ He frowned. ‘Speaking of which. One rainstorm and that would have been you.’
‘There was no chance of a rainstorm,’ Hugh said, in a sulkier tone than he’d intended.
‘Don’t give me lip,’ said his father. ‘There’s always a chance, you know that.’
‘The water would just have washed out,’ Hugh persisted.
‘No, it wouldn’t,’ his father said. He stabbed a finger at Hugh’s phone, magnifying the map. ‘The culvert wasn’t finished, see? It doesn’t have a lower opening. It’s probably flooded at the bottom already. So you stay out of culverts in future, got it?’
‘OK, OK,’ said Hugh.
‘Promise.’
‘Yes, Dad, all right.’
‘Now help your mother with the washing and then go to your room.’
He didn’t sound angry, or anxious, and Hugh left with some relief that he wasn’t in as much trouble as he could have been.
He didn’t go up that hill again.
7. Second Life
After Hugh had gone to work on Monday morning, Hope took her time over breakfast and found herself running late. She skipped the usual ten minutes of talking Nick into his clothes, and just picked him up and started inserting him in them. Underpants, warm vest, shirt, trousers… at that point he kicked – not deliberately at her, but walking his legs in midair and landing an occasional random heel on her shins.
‘Stop that!’ Hope said.
‘I’m not I’m not I’m not.’
He was drumming his heels on her now, squirming in the elbow she had around his waist.
‘That bloody hurts,’ she said. ‘Stop it!’
Instead of doing what she instantly expected and gleefully repeating the bad word that had slipped out, Nick acquiesced in sudden sullen silence, stepping into his trouser legs one by one as she set him down and held them out in front of him. He even buttoned the waistband and buckled the belt, in a belated display of independence.
Then, as she held out his cagoule, he put his arms in one by one and said as he turned away to zip up the front: ‘This is such cack.’
He said it in such a weary, resigned voice that Hope was more shocked by the tone than the content. His accent on the last word was like Hugh’s, with a long vowel and a guttural: caachck. And he didn’t say it in the defiant way he usually repeated naughty words, or as if said to provoke her. It was an aside, a remark.
So she didn’t reprove him.
‘What is cack, Nick?’ she asked.
‘It’s what comes out of people’s bottoms,’ he said, without so much as a giggle, then added: ‘You know – poo.’
‘Yes, I know,’ she said, getting into her own cagoule. ‘But what is “such cack”?’
Nick pouted. ‘The weather,’ he said. ‘Everything.’
‘Surely not everything?’ Hope said, holding out her hand.
‘Not you and Max and Dad,’ Nick allowed.
‘Or nursery?’
‘Nursery’s all right,’ he said.
They went out the door and into the rain.
‘Well, I’m glad to hear that,’ Hope said, locking the door. ‘Off we go!’
Nick went up the steps. To him, they were high. His legs swung out to the sides as he clambered up.
They walked down Victoria Road, rain rattling on their hoods.
‘Who did you hear saying that word?’ Hope asked.
‘What word?’
‘You know,’ Hope said.
‘I don’t know.’
‘All right, “cack”.’
‘I meant I don’t know who said it.’
‘Was it your dad?’ Hope asked, in an amused tone.
‘Oh, no!’ Nick looked up at her from under his hood.
‘So who was it?’
‘Don’t know, don’t care,’ Nick sang.
That wasn’t like him, either.
His hand tightened on hers as he swung over a puddle.
Oh well, Hope thought. Probably one of the kids at nursery. She’d have to have a word with Miss Petrie about language.
Miss Petrie, as it turned out, was outside the nursery gates when Hope and Nick arrived. She was standing talking to – or being talked to by – three mothers. One of them – Carolyn Smith, an Adventist faith-kid mum whom Hope knew well enough to nod to – saw their approach and pointed. Four heads turned. Miss Petrie looked worried, Carolyn a little embarrassed, the other two tight-lipped.
Hope marched up.
‘Good morning, Miss Petrie,’ she said. ‘Hi, Carolyn.’
‘Good morning, Miss Petrie,’ Nick said.
Miss Petrie gave him a brief smile. ‘Be a big boy and go in by yourself today, Nick,’ she said.
She glanced at Hope, as if getting permission, then stooped and pushed the small of Nick’s back with one hand while waving her phone at the gate with the other. The gate began to slide open. Nick seemed taken with the idea.
‘Bye, Mummy,’ he said.
But one of the two angry-looking mums blocked his path. He looked up at her, and then back at Hope and Miss Petrie. Finding no guidance there, he dodged to one side, lunch box swinging, and nipped past the woman’s legs. She reached out and snatched at his shoulder.
‘Oi!’ Hope shouted.
The angry mum’s fingers slipped on the wet cagoule and Nick darted away, through the gate. He’d disappeared and the gate had begun to swing shut behind him before Hope managed another word.
She stepped forward, getting in the woman’s face. ‘Don’t you dare grab at my child like that!’
The other woman didn’t back down.
‘Your child’s endang
ering my child,’ she said.
‘No, he is not,’ Hope said. ‘And that’s not the point. Endangering is statistics. Grabbing is battery. I could report you to the police.’
‘Now, Hope,’ Miss Petrie interposed, ‘that’s not very helpful, is it?’
As Hope turned to reply, she saw that the other angry mum was holding up a phone, recording the confrontation. This made her more angry and more restrained at the same moment.
‘Maybe it would be helpful if you could tell me what’s going on.’
‘Well,’ Miss Petrie said, wiping rain from her eyebrows, ‘Chloe and Sophie here were just raising their concerns about your little boy bringing in infections…’
‘Look,’ said Hope, gesturing in a vague way so it didn’t look like pointing, ‘there’s Philippa Kaur going in with her kids, and they sure haven’t had the fix. Why don’t you have a go at her?’
Sophie, the one who was recording, clicked her tongue at this.
‘What?’ Hope said.
‘Oh,’ said Chloe, the one she’d just had words with, ‘so you want us to single out the Kaurs, do you?’
‘No!’ Hope snapped, outraged at the unspoken imputation. ‘I just don’t see why you should single out me.’
‘Because you’re just doing it out of selfishness,’ said Chloe. ‘We’re doing it and Philippa’s doing it because of conscience.’
The penny dropped.
‘Oh, your kids are faith kids too!’
‘That’s right,’ said Chloe. ‘So they’re in danger of any infections your kid brings in.’
‘Oh, Christ!’ said Hope.
Sophie tutted again, and Carolyn, who’d been hanging back until now, assumed a pained look and said: ‘Please.’
‘OK, sorry,’ said Hope. She took a step back, feeling crowded, and tried a different tack.
‘Why can’t we stick together on this? I know we all have different reasons for not wanting the fix, but let’s be honest, our kids give each other germs no matter what our reasons are, and they’re not giving or getting germs from the rest. So it’s only us and our kids this affects, right? Can’t we, you know, live and let live about it?’
‘You don’t understand, Hope,’ Carolyn said. ‘It’s our live and let live that you’re putting in danger. You and people like you, all over England.’
‘What d’you mean, people like me?’
‘Oh, you know,’ said Carolyn. ‘Those Iranian atheists or whatever they are.’
‘Nearly all atheists are absolutely up for the fix,’ Hope said. ‘Believe me, I checked. Anyway, I don’t see how what I’m doing puts you in any danger. I’d have thought you’d, you know, sort of welcome it that we agreed on this point at least.’
‘But we don’t agree on it!’ said Carolyn.
Hope blinked. ‘If you say so. But leaving beliefs out of it… why is it a problem for you if I do the same thing as you do? I mean, one more nature kid can’t be that much of a risk, and it’s a risk you’re willing to take yourselves.’
Carolyn was frowning. ‘You don’t get it,’ she said. ‘You’re missing the point. It’s not the infections; it’s that you’re putting at risk the live-and-let-live thing. I mean, people put up with us because we have a good reason, and if you’re doing it without a good reason and the Kasrani case becomes a precedent and all that, then they might well turn on us. They might say, well, if it’s so important that we have to force it on a mum who doesn’t want it, why should the faith mums be different? Because, see, the fix doesn’t work for everything, and there’s always the chance that one of our kids might catch something serious and pass it on to, you know, the other kids, so it’s a balance, right? We’ve got our faith, well our faiths, OK, on our side of the balance, and people respect that, but you’re just causing trouble.’
Chloe and Sophie nodded along. Miss Petrie looked from face to face helplessly. Hope took another step back.
‘You’re really telling me,’ she said, ‘that you’d rather I had the fix than not?’
Carolyn looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, not exactly…’
‘You don’t actually care if other people have the fix, do you?’ Hope accused. ‘Just as long as you’re left alone to stick to your, oh, your deeply held beliefs. You’re as selfish as the anti-vaccers.’
‘You’re the one who’s being selfish,’ said Carolyn.
‘You don’t believe in nothing,’ Sophie said. She’d just stopped recording, and now spoke up. ‘I mean, what’s it to you anyway? I have my guru, what do you have?’
‘I have a job to go to,’ said Hope.
She turned away.
Next day the weather was better: still chilly, overcast, but not actually raining or snowing. Miss Petrie’s cagoule was open, over a buttoned-up green cardigan and flower-printed dress. The cagoule wafted behind her as she hurried about, talking to a dozen or so mothers and two fathers outside the nursery-school gate. As Hope walked up with Nick, the parents all lined up across the pavement in front of her. The three Hope had spoken to the day before – Carolyn, Chloe and Sophie – were in the middle of the row and slightly forward of the rest. Miss Petrie stood a little away from them, swithering for a moment, and then stepped forward.
‘Can I take Nick for a little walk round the corner?’ she said. ‘Just for a few minutes, while you…’ She gestured vaguely behind her.
‘No,’ said Hope. ‘You can’t.’
Nick tugged at her hand. ‘I want to!’
Hope looked down at his pleading face and tried to smile.
‘Just hold on a moment, Nick,’ she said. She turned to Miss Petrie. ‘Not this again.’
‘I’m sorry, Hope,’ said Miss Petrie. ‘All the faith kids’ parents and some of the, uh, the other parents are concerned about—’
‘Don’t give me any more of that crap, Miss Petrie! I don’t care what their concerns are. They’re being ignorant, bigoted and unfair and that’s all there is to it. Your job isn’t to pander to them, or even argue with them. Your job’s to ignore them, tell them to go somewhere else, and to get the… get out of our way before you call the police. They can arrange an appointment with Mrs Wilson if they want to discuss school policy. Now, will you tell them that, or will I?’
Miss Petrie’s troubled face brightened.
‘Well, that’s a way of looking at it, Hope. I will raise the point about how this is out of my hands…’
Her voice trailed off and her gaze locked on something behind Hope’s shoulder. Her mouth opened, and stayed open. Hope turned and looked around. Five or six young women, hands linked, were skipping along the pavement towards them. As they came within a few metres they started singing. The line split. Someone caught Hope’s right hand, and someone else caught Nick’s left hand, and in a moment the line had formed a ring, with Miss Petrie outside it. Hope felt an odd thrill as the stranger’s fingers interlaced with hers, and an obscure sense that there was something missing, something not as obvious as a finger, about the hand, but before she had time to process either thought, she felt a tug to one side and to keep her balance had to sidestep, and then again, and then she and Nick were whirling around with the young women, who were all smiling and singing:
‘Ring a ring a roses, a pocket full of posies…’
She heard Nick’s voice joining in. ‘Atishoo! Atishoo!’
She couldn’t help joining in herself, on the last line, but the others didn’t shout out what she did. They shouted:
‘We all JUMP UP!’
And they did, giving Hope’s shoulders a wrench as she tried to fall down as everyone else including Nick jumped up. She’d just sorted herself out from that when her arms were again tugged as the women and Nick all moved a few steps towards the school gate and then started again, side-skipping around in a ring. After a couple more rounds of this they were at the gate – Miss Petrie, and one of the fathers and two of the mothers who tried to intercept them, were brushed aside by the whirligig of bodies. The next time they stopped, Nick was standing rig
ht in front of the now open gate. Well done, Miss Petrie! Hope ducked and gave him a quick kiss on the top of the head, which got her an ‘I’m-too-old-for-that’ scowl.
‘In you go!’ she said.
Dizzy, and with a puzzled look, Nick ran in. He glanced back over his shoulder and gave a quick wave. Hope barely had time to wave back before her hands were snatched again and she was hauled into skipping along the pavement with the other women. She looked back, and saw Carolyn, Chloe, Sophie and the rest of the group of parents who’d tried to stop Nick going into nursery gazing after them with baffled looks. It had all taken about two minutes, though it had seemed longer. The line split and re-formed like molecules as it bypassed late-arriving parents and children and others on the pavement, and swung almost into the road as it swept around the nearest corner. Then they slewed to a halt, panting and laughing. Hope glanced around her unexpected rescuers. All six of them were women who looked a bit younger than she was. They were dressed for the weather and for running – jeans or short skirts with leggings, and trainers or Kickers. The rest of their clothing, in all its variety, had a craft-made or selective-vintage look: the sort of stuff, Hope thought with a brief pang, that she’d once imagined herself selling or making.
‘Thanks for that,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’
‘We just came together for this,’ said the woman who’d held her hand. ‘None of us know each other.’ She grinned around at the group. ‘Thanks, all. I’ll take it from here.’
The rest nodded, smiled, and walked off, up or down or across the street. Hope stared at the one who remained, still grinning at her out of a sunburst of blond ringlets. The woman stuck out a hand.
‘My name’s Maya,’ she said. ‘I did this.’
Hope shook hands. ‘Hope Morrison,’ she said. ‘You organised it?’
‘Flash mob,’ Maya explained, or rather, said as if it was an explanation.
‘Hmm,’ said Hope.
‘They all live around here,’ said Maya. ‘Bet you didn’t know you had so many interesting and supportive neighbours, huh?’
Hope felt patronised. ‘How would you know that?’
Maya didn’t seem fazed. ‘If you did, you could have done something like this yourself.’
